


Two Steps Back

by CaptainCorale



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Disorder, Breaking Up & Making Up, Depression, Eventual Romance, Flashbacks, Fluff, Grumpy Old Men, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Post Redemption Arc Gabriel, Recovery, Sexual Content, Soft Old Dads, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-09-19 23:06:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9464549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainCorale/pseuds/CaptainCorale
Summary: A serious take on how Gabriel and Jack returned to themselves, and to each other.Character study/Headcanon study taking place after Gabriel Reyes has been cured.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for checking this out! I started writing this months ago and by the time I had finished the first chapter it was almost 10k so I thought I might break it up a little, see what the reaction was before deciding if I should try and expand it more, or give you all I've got and leave it be. I realise now that this story follows many popular headcanons out there, but I swear I thought I was being original at the time. 
> 
> I have dubbed the group that caught Sombra hacking many years ago (the top of the food chain group) 'The Agency'. Run by an evil sect of omnics, they implanted a chip in Gabriel's brain that essentially caused a whole lot of mess before picking him up after the explosion for experimentation of what the SEP could do/how it could be beaten. Sombra hacked him free of it, and they went around together afterwards trying to find who was in cahoots with them. Of course, they had conflicting motives for this, and eventually went their separate ways. Overwatch became aware of this, and tracked Reaper to show him that they could reverse what had happened to him. 
> 
> This story begins after Gabriel has already has his reversal procedure finished, and hasn't seen Jack yet. He doesn't even know he's on base in Gibraltar. There's some darkness in their past that needs to come to light before either of them can have peace and move on. This explores that, and their joint recovery, but I might add some more plot into it. They both have a myriad of mental health issues, e.g. PTSD, anxiety and panic disorders.
> 
> If you enjoyed my work, please consider [ buying me a coffee ](http://https://ko-fi.com/cptncorale/) so I can sit and write in coffee shops and be super powered with caffeine!

“It’s done,” Angela said, looking drained and every inch of her forty-something years. “The final procedure went well. We can confirm that it’s been fully reversed, and he’s awake. You can go in now, Jack. If you want.”

He’d finally run out of time, then.

Jack lingered at the doorway for a moment longer. Even now he was still unsure if he wanted to see what was inside the infirmary room. He felt his breathing quicken against his will. What ghosts from his past waited in there for him, he thought worriedly. Old dogs, new tricks, etcetera. He’d always been bad at dealing with the _emotional_ side of things. He saw little reason to start changing that now, especially since he knew going into the room would be like nudging the boulder off the proverbial ledge. Once it started rolling down the hill it would be impossible to stop. In truth, he didn’t know if he could handle it. He would have to face up to everything he’d been avoiding thinking about all these years since becoming Soldier: 76, and probably from before then, too; all of the things he’d missed, hidden from, ignored...and gotten wrong. At least now, here at the edge of inevitable change, he could fool himself into thinking that it wasn’t really happening at all. 

 _'You’re a damn coward, Jack_ ,’ he told himself.

 " _Run, Jack! Hide! They’re coming for me! Don’t let them find you!”_  

He grunted as almost at once the niggling unpleasantness that had plagued him all day became a quivering sense of panic. He felt it threaten to overcome him as his breathing resisted slowing. He wanted nothing more than to run down the hall, to get as far away from the room as fast as possible. But procrastinating dealing with the situation _now_ would only mean more stress  _later_ , he told himself. There was no point in pretending that this wasn’t happening after he’d known this was coming for some time now. Walking tall into the infirmary and facing this head on was something he  _had_ to do. No matter what Jack would have to face following that, he knew he owed that much at least. He counted his breathing very slowly five times in and out before he managed to wrestle the feeling into submission.

After one final shaking breath, he entered the room.

“ _Jack_ …what is he  _doing_ here?” the man convalescing inside barked at Angela. Reaper’s, no, _Gabriel’s_ voice was much harsher and more tired than Jack had ever heard it. There was still an underlying gravelly croak to it that hadn’t been there before, back when they were...young. But Jack recognised it nonetheless, as he always would. He was so familiar with Gabriel’s voice he had even recognised the tones and timbre of it the first time he had heard _Reaper_ speak, when it had been little more than a haunting death rattle of a noise.  

“What do you _want?_ ” Gabriel growled.

Jack said nothing for a long moment, struck dumb, in complete shock at the sight of the man sitting upright in the small hospital gurney with a book resting in his lap as though he hadn’t been a partially inhuman, botched science experiment just days previously. Jack had seen and fought Reaper more than once. The fight in Egypt had been the first in a long list of encounters with the wraith. He had made a formidable and fearsome opponent, for sure.

But it had almost been impossible for Jack to imagine that under that morbid mask, surreal abilities, and menacing attire there had been anything resembling a man of some sort of flesh and blood. It had been even more difficult to imagine that it was _his_ man, his _Gabriel_ who, in some twisted way, would always be his in Jack’s mind...as Jack knew _he_ would always be Gabriel’s. While he had obviously become aware of the fact that the infamous terrorist known as Reaper _was in fact_ Gabriel, he had always stringently kept the two entities separate in his mind. It was easier that way, he’d figured. For himself, of course. Facing what had become of Gabriel, well. Jack was a coward, after all. It didn’t bear thinking about.

But, denial or no, there he was: Reaper had gone in, and Gabriel Reyes had come out. Gabriel, back from the dead, and human again. Jack grit his teeth as he was getting ahead of himself already. This man might _look_ like Gabriel, but it was still to be determined how much of the man remained; how much The Agency had taken from him during the process of their conditioning and experimentation, and how much had been destroyed in the undoing of both.

“You look like shit,” Jack finally said.

Gabriel glowered and opened his mouth to no doubt spit something in response, however the effect was stoppered somewhat by the sudden tremors that overtook his body. He folded his arms around himself as the shaking refused to subside, and a pained groan escaped him. Angela began to fiddle with a syringe and a vial of liquid calmly.

The convulsions afforded Jack the opportunity to openly scrutinise Gabriel. His frame was still sturdy and solid, which was surprising. Jack hadn’t expected that Gabriel would remain so thick and muscular after Angela’s work. Somehow, he’d managed to maintain a familiar demeanor of agile power even while shivering in a paper thin robe. He was, however, very pale, scarred, and Jack did wonder what the rest of his skin would look like after the many bandages were removed. But beyond that there wasn’t an awful lot to suggest that he’d spent the past twenty years in a half rotten, corporeal form. Even age seemed to have been kind. While his hair was curled and greying, and his beard almost completely white, he didn’t look a day over a well preserved fifty. But then again, neither did Jack. They should have sold the S.E.P serum as an anti-aging solution, he thought. America would have been the richest country in the world by trillions. 

But it was jarring because when Angela had described what she thought she might be able to do for Gabriel, Jack had envisioned a shrunken, raw thing emerging from the aftermath of it; some deflated, weak, shell of a man, mentally and physically. The thought had made him extremely opposed to the entire operation. Gabriel Reyes’ life and body and mind had been played with one too many times. It had been Jack’s opinion that the least they could do was put an end to the demented monstrosity that used to be their friend. Give him some peace, finally. But he had been outvoted, and he was no longer the leader of “Overwatch”, after all. Winston, Angela and McCree had been adamant that what happened to Gabriel should be, _could be_ , mended, and so he had been left behind while they tracked Reaper down, untrusted to follow their plan.

 _'Youth today_ ,’ he thought grimly. ‘ _But they were right, weren’t they, old man?_   _Reaper had been free of The Agency’s control for some time, thanks to some thirty year old hacker. They saved him when you couldn’t.'_

" _Run, Jack! Hide! They’re coming for me! Don’t let them find you!”_

His headache from earlier was returning in full force. But it was Gabriel’s shaking that held his concern for now. Jack frowned as it refused to ebb.

“It is normal,” Angela said, going to his side. “His body is repairing, and becoming used to its natural functionality again. There will be muscle fasciculation for some time. Extensive therapies will be required-”

“Don’t t-t-talk ‘bout m-me as if I’m not right h-here,” Gabriel interrupted.

“I am only explaining your status, Gabriel,” Angela said exasperatedly as if she was scolding a whiny child with a cold, and not a brainwashed super soldier, former terrorist monster whose sanity and free will had been ripped from his body, and bulldozed back in again. Even in old age, it seemed that there would be no peace for either of them.

Angela calmly injected the clear liquid into his cannulae feed. Jack followed her, standing at Gabriel’s other side. He hadn’t realised that he had been afraid to approach until now. The spasming slowly subsided under their watch, and his breathing evened out.

“There.” Angela put the needle aside, and took off her latex gloves. “We will use this advanced variation of pregabalin to help with the shaking, and nerve pain. The other medications will help repair the damaged nerves and cells that the S.E.P formula won’t. The next forty-eight hours will be the test, but we are confident that with time you should make a full recovery. Much of what the S.E.P formula can do is unknown, so we will have to wait and see how much time and medication you need.”

Gabriel gave no indication that he was listening to her. Instead, he was staring up at Jack, his expression unreadable. Jack looked right back at him, and his heart skipped a beat. Gabriel was _alive_ , he was here; sullen and sarcastic, and _..._ still so beautiful _._

Although more lined around the edges now, Gabriel’s eyes were still the same big, brown ones he remembered. Puppy eyes, Jack used to call them. Jack felt something inside him tighten as he gazed back at him. Even now to Jack, Gabriel’s eyes were coming home after a long day, laughing after making love, a promise to stay by each other’s side forever, they were freedom, truth, and love; they were his past, his present, and now...Maybe they could be his future again.

“Get your fucking hands off me, _Jack_ ,” Gabriel snarled. Jack jumped. He’d gotten so lost in his maudlin thoughts that he hadn’t even noticed he’d placed his hands on Gabriel’s bandaged hand and forearm. He snapped them back quickly, as though he’d burned himself, and felt his face redden.

' _Pull it together, Jack. You’re not remembering things clearly_ ,’ he told himself. ‘ _You’re getting real sappy, soldier.’_

Gabriel sneered at him. Jack kept his face indifferent purposefully, not wanting to give Gabriel the satisfaction of unnerving him, which of course he had.

“I’ll leave you for now, Gabriel,” Angela said, her sharp blue eyes darting between the two of them warily. She walked to the exit as she spoke, “try to sleep. Your body needs it.” She stopped at the door for a moment. “You are safe now, you know,” she added finally, and left.

Gabriel rolled his eyes at her exit, and a thinly restrained  tremor passed through his body again. He glared at Jack, who said nothing, and his lips twisted in distaste as though he’d bitten into a lemon.

“What the _fuck_ do you want, Jack?”

“I thought we could chat, Reyes. Catch up on old times,” Jack replied with a thousand times more smooth confidence in his voice than he actually felt.

“Chat, huh? Come to see if there’s any brainwashed terrorist left in me? D-desperate for an excuse to finally put me down, I bet. Or have you really just come here to have a good l-look at the freakshow after you missed out the last time?”

“What are you talking about?” Jack asked irritably. He should have expected Gabriel to come out the other side of a four day medical procedure all guns blazing: he was unadulterated passion, intensity and wrath, always and forever. It was why they had fallen apart.

_'But it was also why we came together.'_

“Don’t play innocent with me, Golden Boy. You stand there like butter wouldn’t melt, b-but I know the truth. How can you even come in here and look me in the eye after what you did?”

“After what _I_ did?” Jack said, suddenly livid in return. “What is it you’re trying to accuse me of, Reyes?”

“Give me a break. Get the fuck out of here, Jack. I might die in the next forty-eight hours, _finally_ , but I’m not gonna waste that time talking shit to your treacherous ass.”

“Gabriel, I do-”

“Don’t you _Gabriel_ me, b-batting your baby blues, you deceitful piece of shit.” Gabriel hurled the book on his lap away in his anger. “How dare you? It’s _your fault_ this happened to me. I tried to tell you a hundred times that something wasn’t right. You didn’t listen. You never fucking listened to me. I had a fucking omnic m-microchip implanted in my brain, you _dick_ , and some toaster asshole playing puppetmaster with me, and I _still_ had more sense, and strength than _you_ .” He laughed then, a hollow, humourless sound. “Not like it would have mattered anyway, even if you had looked up from your sparkly Strike Commander jockstrap for a second, because _you_ , you _happily_ left me to rot, didn’t you, _mi sol_?”

Jack ignored the old nickname though it was like a shot to the chest, especially when Gabriel said it with such a powerful venom behind it.

“Left you? With The Agency? What the hell are you talking about, now? I had nothing to do with that, Gabriel. I didn’t know anything about what they did to you. Goddamnit. When will you stop blaming others for everything that’s gone wrong?”

It was a terribly cheap shot, and Jack almost regretted saying it the second it flew out of his mouth. But he knew the remark would cut where he wanted it to hurt. It obviously worked because Gabriel reacted as though he’d been slapped, the fury etched into every line in his face. Jack was sure that if he’d been able, Gabriel would have leapt for his throat that very moment.

“You fucking, filthy liar. I know you saw them take me, you little rat,” Gabriel hissed quietly, a snake eyeing its prey before the strike. “After the explosion, I told you to _run_ , I told you to _hide_ , but I know you watched those tin can bastards take me. Seeing them even that one time...you could have found me, if you’d wanted to. I know you could have. But as long as I was out of your hair, you didn’t give a fuck, right? You scurried off into the sewers and vanished like the little _rodent_ you are.”

_“Run, Jack! Hide! They’re coming for me! Don’t let them find you!”_

Jack suddenly felt winded, all the air punched out of him in a single moment. A horrible realisation teetered on a precipice in his mind; a dangling truth wriggling on a hook that Jack knew somewhere inside him he had been leaping and snapping at like a dopey, hungry fish for a long time.

He shook his head stupidly.

“Yeah,” Gabriel continued. “Thought you’d gotten away with that, hadn’t you? You coward. Does your new little merry band of heroes know about that, or are the kiddos too busy shoving their noses up your ass to see how much of a phony you really are?”

Jack felt like he was going to vomit, and he didn’t even know why. “I don’t know,” Jack babbled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  

“Oh, you know, all right.” Gabriel smirked triumphantly at Jack’s obvious distress, like the cat who caught the canary.

Jack said nothing, his thoughts suddenly in a flurry as he struggled to make sense of what Gabriel said and how he could say it with such honest conviction when Jack had no notion of any such thing happening. He just needed Gabriel to shut up for a second.

“I kept thinking ‘don’t panic, Gabe, he’s coming. They’ll come for you’. But, I got a little less optimistic after the first _decade_.”

“And you know,” he laughed again. “When you never came, I started to think _you_ had died that day after all. You were all fucked up, and everyone kept saying you’d died. Built a fucking statue and everything. I dreamt of seeing you lying there after the explosion, your eyes looking at me all glossed over, and I started believing it. Whenever I had those moments for myself when their hold on me got weaker than usual...All I could think of was you, Jack. I had some kind of bizarre clarity where despite that fucking chip I thought, ‘he isn’t coming, he’s dead. You lost him.’ I grieved for you, Jack. All that time you were laughing it up thinking ‘good riddance to ol’ Gabe.’”

“Gabe, no. That’s not - I thought, I was sure you were dead, too.” Jack felt like he was going to pass out. “If I had known…”

This was exactly what he had feared the most. Such long gone things from his past that were only now coming into question would throw Jack’s formerly certain life into a disfigured, ugly light. He didn’t remember seeing Gabriel on the day of explosion. _He didn’t_. How could he have seen anything at all when the explosion had left him almost blind? He'd needed months of recovery afterwards. So, why did he feel like his heart was about to explode from sheer panic?

“Don’t bullshit me, Jack!”

Gabriel wheezed for a moment, his body blatantly too weak to cope with the stress of their confrontation.

“Of course,” he continued shakily. “Then I found out you _were_ alive. P-partying it up with Ana all this time. You were alive, you both were, and _you_ saw them take me, and didn’t try to find me. _You left me to suffer_. When I saw you both in Egypt, I don’t think I’ve ever hated someone more in my life. I would have killed you that day, Jack. But, hey, Ana to the rescue again.”

“No, that’s not-”

“ _No_! You may have did this to me, Jack, but thank fuck for some stupid kid from the middle of nowhere in Mexico for undoing it. Turns out Sombra had my back more than the love of my life, hacked that chip and saved my ass like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Funny how life pans out.”

_"Run, Jack! Hide! They’re coming for me! Don’t let them find you!”_

Jack felt the bile rise in his throat. He had to get out of there. He bolted for the door, and didn’t dare look back. Gabriel’s shout after him lost as he ran from the infirmary.

“Where you going, Jackie? Come back, don’t you wanna _chat_ anymore?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know an update was terribly overdue. If you're still reading, then thank you for being patient. It's shorter, but I'm still tripping over myself in the next part trying to sort out where exactly I want this to go. I've had the first 3 chapters written for months but keep getting lost in edits. >.<

Gasping for air, Jack didn’t even know which direction he was running in, he just knew he had to keep moving. His head was buzzing, and the panic began to overwhelm him much quicker than it had before outside the infirmary. He was far from his room, but he headed in that direction anyway, praying that he wouldn’t pass out before he got there. Luckily the grounds were empty at this time in the evening. Everyone would either be in the mess, or showering from a long day of work. At least if he did sprint past anyone he didn’t notice them, agitated as he was.

_‘What the hell is happening to me?’_

Of course he’d expected Gabriel to have something to say about Switzerland, but he couldn’t understand why Gabriel’s claims had rocked him so deeply to his core. They made no _sense_ after all because as far as Jack could remember, he _hadn’t_ seen Gabriel at all after the explosion. He could clearly remember the ruins, his wounds, the debris, and running away from it all. But he had no plain vision in his mind of seeing Gabriel there. Yet Gabriel had sounded so vehement about what he thought Jack had done. He couldn’t shake the conviction with which Gabriel had spoken out of his mind.

Jack didn’t pass out. Somehow he made it back to the safe, dull confines of his rooms. He slammed the door behind him and fell against it to the floor in a heap. The individual rooms were generously sized, which was not unusual for Overwatch these days considering their forces were minuscule at best. But they could have been a mansion and he would have still felt trapped, breathless and spiraling. His heart felt like it was beating in his throat, trying to escape out of his mouth, as he replayed Gabriel’s furious tirade in his mind over and over again. He battled within himself to think of a reason, something obvious and irrefutable, that would prove Gabriel was lying. Yet even his own memory could not fully convince him of it.

To Jack’s anguish, despite everything he knew he couldn’t help but wonder...was he possibly to blame for what happened to Gabriel? Something in Gabriel’s angry words had loosened a tightly wound knot in Jack’s subconscious. He was terrified of it as much as he was aware of it. He could actively feel something within him resisting it; pressing down against it even, like meat in a grinder.

It was impossible to unpack everything he felt, and answer every question he had at that moment. He was too old for this shit. Although he looked far from it, Jack was almost seventy years old, and he was  _tired_.

He didn’t know how long he sat on the floor, thoughts and words whirling through his head. But slowly, long after his breathing had calmed, he went to his bedroom closet and pulled out the small box from the back of the top shelf. He had very few personal effects, but the box in his hands was probably the most important thing he owned.

The contents were too painful for him to peruse casually. In truth, he couldn’t remember the last time he had opened it, but for some unknown reason he was compelled to now. If he was to believe Gabriel was truly Gabriel again, he had to see Gabriel as he’d known him.

He took out a dusty data card marked ‘J&G’ with a little loveheart drawn next to it, and inserted it into his holopad. The video started up, and Jack gasped. It was _this_ one. Almost at once he wanted to shut it off, the memory of it already overwhelming him. His finger hovered over the ’power off’ button, but some part of him was desperate for the emotional agony he knew it would birth, and let it play out.

\--

“Are you filming me?” Jack called out.

There was a laugh from the man holding the camera as he approached a young Jack lying in the bed. “Maybe?” he said. Of course it was Gabriel. As if it would have been anyone else.

“Why? Hey, cut it out, Gabe.” Jack reached for the camera and missed.

Jack realised that he was in their bed in Gabriel’s old home rooms from when he was leader and commander of Overwatch, before Jack had taken over. This was a very old holovid of them.

“Gabi, stop. I look a mess,” Jack growled, and tried to hide his face.

“You look absolutely gorgeous,” Gabriel said reverently, and came closer still. The camera panned slowly over Jack’s naked upper body, the tangled sheets around his waist protecting what little modesty he had left. His skin was pale, and pinked all over, peppered with an embarrassing amount of love marks. Gabriel always had loved how they looked on his skin. He looked thoroughly fucked; his hair a mess, lips swollen and sweat still drying on his skin.

“Film yourself, Gabe. If you can even fit your dick in the shot.” Jack laughed. “How are you even still hard?” God, he looked young, and so happy. But he was madly in love, then.

“I’m looking at you, aren’t I?”

Jack stuck his tongue out. “Ain’t you always?”

“I want you to say it again,” Gabriel said, his voice gentle with a soft kind of happiness, like a warm surf washing over the sandy shore, lapping at your toes. Jack sat up on one elbow, and cocked a brow at him.

“Are you serious? You’re filming me for this?”

“Yes, I am. I want this moment immortalized in history.”

“You’re so cheesy _. S_ _top!”_

He laughed again as Gabriel reached out and tried to pinch his nipple. Jack swatted him away, and there was an impish quiet as Jack grinned up at him, Gabriel no doubt smiling back.

“I love you,” Jack said finally, his cheeks going pink. “There? Happy now?”

It was hard to believe his eyes ever sparkled like that, Jack thought.

Gabriel gasped theatrically. “Te quiero con todo mi alma, Jack!”

“What the hell does that mean?” Jack frowned. “Did you make fun of me?” He squeaked as they tumbled, Gabriel, naked as the day, joining him on the bed. They were pressed together, laughing and wrestling playfully. Gabriel biting lightly into the fleshy part of his thick torso as Jack giggled. The camera fell onto the pillow, forgotten.

Gabriel was in clear view of the shot then, his shaved head moved to press his lips to Jack’s throat. Jack gasped, and his head tilted back to give him more access. Gabriel’s hands disappeared downwards out of the shot. After a moment they simultaneously moaned and Gabriel laughed again. Jack’s eyes fluttered closed, his lips parting. The wet sounds of Gabriel’s hands working in him, playing him like a fiddle, could be heard over his panting.

“Gabi, Gabi, your fingers are like magic.”

“Mmm, is that right?”

Jack choked on another gasp as Gabriel lifted his thighs against his chest. Gabriel’s grin turned feral and he did something with his hips then that made Jack cry out.

“Oh. _Gabi, holy fu-_ ,”

“Well, that was easy,” Gabriel chuckled. “I love you, Jack.” He was fucking him.

“Mm, I love you. Oh, _God_ ,” Jack keened, his head tossing from side to side as Gabriel’s thrusts continued steadily.

“Already, Jackie?” Gabriel laughed.

“Shut up, shut up, don’t stop. Harder, faster, c’mon.”

Jack knew how this ended. They’d fucked like animals, with Jack riding Gabriel like there was no tomorrow. Later, Jack had lost his shit when he discovered the camera had been left on the whole time. Gabriel had laughed his ass off, their ‘inadvertent sex tape’ he’d called it, and suggested they keep it to watch it later.

They never had. But the word ‘inadvertent’ had remained forever hilarious to the both of them.

\--

Jack switched the holovid off, threw it aside and pawed at wet eyes roughly.

_You sad, old man._

They used to be so happy once upon a time. But everything had gotten so messed up between them. The again, Jack asked himself, had the really bad times between them even been between _them_ , or had The Agency gotten their claws into Gabriel's life already? And had it ever become so bad that Jack would have seen The Agency take Gabriel and deliberately ignored it? _No_. How could Gabriel think that of him, he thought, unless Gabriel was one hundred percent certain of what he had seen...

_“Run, Jack! Hide! They’re coming for me! Don’t let them find you!”_

He had a horrible, pounding headache, and tried to ease it by pinching the bridge of his nose. He sighed; a sad, trembling sound that betrayed only a fraction of the misery he felt. All of this was exactly what Jack had been so terrified of. This boulder bounding down the hill was unstoppable now. Jack didn’t know where it would end up, or what would be bowled over in the process of it all.

Watching the holovid had managed to serve one purpose, however. Somehow, against his better judgement he knew now that he did believe Gabriel truly was Gabriel again. He was alive. He was back; Reaper was gone, and Gabriel was telling _some kind_ of truth. Jack just hadn’t managed to wrap his head fully around what yet. He scowled in frustration to himself as another rush of fleeting memory escaped him, slipping by him as perceptible yet elusive as fog. It was a curse that had plagued him for as long as he could remember, evanescent memories that left a constant sense of _knowing_ he’d forgotten something.

Unable to face anymore of his troubled thoughts, or watch any more holovids, he took off his boots and climbed under the bedsheets. He was more exhausted than he’d known. After a period of tossing and turning, he drifted off quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to put a little something saucy in there to keep you entertained while I figure this all out, eh? Haha. No, but really, poor Jack. He really doesn't have his shit together, does he? What a mess.

**Author's Note:**

> Just give them both a cup of tea and a blanket, please!
> 
> I'm on [ tumblr ](http://captaincorale.tumblr.com/) too. 
> 
> If you enjoyed my work, please consider [ buying me a coffee ](http://https://ko-fi.com/cptncorale/) so I can sit and write in coffee shops and be super powered with caffeine!


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